


Gaming the System

by LadySilver



Category: The Tomorrow People (1973)
Genre: 80s Fads, Gen, space invaders - Freeform, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:39:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilver/pseuds/LadySilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes a fad is an alien conspiracy to take over the world and sometimes it's just a fad. Telling the difference is the problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gaming the System

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marien/gifts).



Andrew was the one who raised the alarm.

At least, he tried to. Over a year as a Tomorrow Person and he still couldn't get the others to take him seriously.

It was the crowd that first caught his attention. He'd been in this arcade before. Lots of times. And he thought he knew all the games, knew the regulars, knew the rivalries that inevitably sprang up about who had claim to which machine and who had the bragging rights for holding the high scores. A few months off planet and everything changed. While players clustered around all the machines, most of the teens on this afternoon were packed around one situated in the place of honor against the front wall. It had to be new, as the excitement of the watching crowd was so amped up that it tickled along the edges of his telepathy. But there was something else, too—something that felt _wrong_.

Stretching on tip-toe, he tried to see over the heads of those in front of him. He scooted around the back edge of the cluster, peering first through one apparent gap, then another; each closed as quickly as he found it as everyone else also jockeyed for better viewing. The haze of cigarette smoke that filled the air didn't help, nor did the dim lighting that pulled the teenagers into this space and then cut them off from the outside world.

A cacophony of beeps, bloops, blips from the other video games, themselves drowned out by the louder ringing and crashing from the pinball machines kept his “excuse mes” and “sorrys” from being heard. He tried to shove through and found his way blocked, someone's hand slapping him back, someone else's elbow jabbing his chest, a foot kicking back into his shin.

Giving up, he went to get Mike. They'd gone separate ways within seconds of entering the arcade, Andrew heading straight to the back where his favorite Captain Fantastic pinball machine had been relegated, while Mike bee-lined to an alcove where a half dozen Mata Hari pinball machines were sequestered so that the younger arcade goers wouldn't see them.

As expected, Mike was there, though he wasn't playing any of the machines. He was leaning against the side of the nearest one, his shirt open an extra button from what it had been when they'd entered. A girl who looked about his age with tight jeans, a tighter black shirt, and blonde hair feathered into big wings hung off him. Andrew didn't want to interrupt; frankly, he didn't want to be in this room. If his Da saw this, he'd drag Andrew out by his collar and never let him hear the end of it. Fortunately, his Da couldn't teleport, so there was no risk of him showing up here.

“Mike!” Andrew yelled, and then just to be sure, he said it again telepathically.

Reluctantly, Mike broke his attention away from the girl and dragged his gaze toward Andrew. His shoulders sagged. [What do you want, Andrew?] he asked. [Can't you see I'm busy?] His expression said pretty much the same thing.

The girl turned to see what had captured Mike's attention. On seeing Andrew, her lips spread in an indulgent smile. “Oh! Is that your little brother?” Now that she was facing him, Andrew saw that her t-shirt featured a depiction of some kind of cube on the front. Each of the three faces displayed were a different color. Andrew wasn't close enough to see what it was in the dim lighting, and he wasn't inclined to stare at her chest at all to figure it out, regardless of whether Mike was there or not. His Da definitely wouldn't approve of that.

Mike's lip curled up at the girl's question, which she interpreted as a yes. She came over, hands out in greeting, probably hoping to score points by being nice to the kid brother. Andrew managed a weak grin back, but kept his mouth closed. She was an American, which meant she might not be able to tell the difference between Mike's English accent and his Scottish one, but it wasn't a chance he wanted to take. [Mike, you need to come with me. I think we have a problem.]

“You don't have to be shy,” the girl said. Turning back toward Mike, she asked, “Is he always this shy?”

Andrew felt Mike trying to shut him out of his mind, but he wasn't going to be deterred that easily. A year ago, he might have been. Having since then faced several different species of hostile aliens, stood up to the American President, and--oh yeah--helped stop a galactic war, he'd become bold enough that the girl's accusation stung. [Mike!] he shouted, at the same time screwing up his face in what he hoped was the universal expression for “don't you dare ignore me.”

Something of it seemed to get through; Mike sighed, pushing away from the machine. He paused when he got to the girl and brushed a thumb over her cheek. “Don't go anywhere. This'll only take a minute.” With that, he grabbed Andrew's arm and hauled him back into the main body of the arcade. “What was that for? Can't you see that I was just about to get her number?” He had to yell over the noise, which also meant that he couldn't tear into Andrew the way he wanted to.

Andrew wasn't sure what good getting the girl's number would do since Mike couldn't afford to make transatlantic phone calls from his flat, and TIM had put a moratorium on personal calls of all types after the last time Mike had forced everyone in the Lab to listen to him flirting with his pick of the week. “Aye, I saw.” he responded, instead. “I also heard her thinking that she was happy you're such a nice, normal guy.”

Mike's jaw tightened and his cultivated too-cool-for-this slouch disappeared. “You did not.”

Andrew gave a slight shrug. He hadn't, but that didn't mean it wasn't true. “Worry about that later,” he said. “Look over there.” He pointed at the crowd, which had only gotten bigger.

Mike looked, then made a dismissive gesture with his a flick of his hand. “What about it? That's just the new video game.”

“A video game that's _that_ popular?”

“It's a cool game. Great graphics. Sound effects you wouldn't believe.” Mike rose up on the balls of his feet as if eager to go join the throng. “It's called _Space Invaders_.”

Andrew's breath fell out of him. No good could possibly come from a name like that. “Invaders? From space?” Mike wasn't paying enough attention to him to get the connection, so Andrew made it more obvious. “You mean like the Sorsons? The Thargons?”

That was all it took. Mike dropped back down and turned to look at Andrew with a seriousness that he rarely showed anyone. “You don't think...?”

“Aliens,” Andrew said to John. He'd barely finishing materializing in the Lab when he spoke the word.

Mike jumped off the jaunting pad and crossed the room with quick strides to plant himself in front of John, who was sitting on one of the couches, immersed in a newspaper. “We think aliens are trying to take over the Earth,” Mike told him. He paused, cocked an eyebrow. “Again.”

“Dare I ask why?” John asked.

“Andrew and I were just at the arcade,” Mike started, “and there's this video game--”

John gave the newspaper a shake as he lowered it to peer over the top. The crack of flattening paper added an exclamation point to his incredulous “A video game?”

“I've never seen anything like it,” Andrew said. “The way everyone was packed around it, you'd think they were being controlled. Hypnotized.”

“I'll grant that video games draw far more attention than they're worth, but what specifically leads you to think that people wasting their time is a sign of aliens?” John asked.

“Well, it wouldn't be the first time one of them's come after kids, would it?” Mike argued.

Andrew planted his hands on the table that housed TIM's mobile components. “Bubble skin jumpsuits.” Thinking about those suits still gave him the creeps. An alien parasite bonding with his skin and taking him over had been an extreme introduction to the variety of alien lifeforms that lived in the universe.

Mike gave a sharp nod. “The blue and green badges,” he added. That one had been before both Mike and Andrew's time, but had left such a mark on the Tomorrow People's history that all the newer additions could tell the story of the alien exodus like they'd been there. And, while everyone in the world had ended up involved, they all remembered that children had been the initial targets.

“The Nazi suits,” Andrew added, because he knew Mike wouldn't. To his surprise, Mike only scowled at the reminder without so much as a complaint to John about Hsui Tai having told Andrew that story.

“Fine,” John conceded. “All of those were fashion related. Last I checked, video games were not a fashion accessory.” He started to lift the newspaper again as if there was nothing more to say on the subject.

“The game's called Space Invaders!” Andrew interjected. He could see his chance to get the threat through to John vanishing quickly.

The lights on TIM's chassis came on. “The game in question has become extraordinarily popular, very quickly,” he supplied.

“Your point, TIM?” John asked, once again lowering the paper.

“Merely that, as the boys have pointed out, there is precedent.”

John let out a deep sigh and folded the paper up, setting it on the couch for his later attention. “I suppose there's no harm in checking it out. Where is this arcade?”

The arcade was closed down and dark when the Tomorrow People returned to it that night. All the machines were turned off, and the darkened screens stared sadly into the empty room. Though no one was likely to interrupt them, Andrew found himself tip-toeing across the open room that seemed cavernous when it wasn't teeming with people. He led the way to the game, then stood back with Mike, aiming their torches so John could see to run the scan.

The scanner buzzed with a steady humming sound as it passed over the front and back of the wooden box, up the sides, then across the darkened screen while John's expression only grew flatter at whatever he was reading on the display. His already small mouth was pressed into a tight moue. At last, he said, “There. See, there's nothing. Every bit of technology in this machine is human origin.”

“Maybe it's not the machine,” Mike suggested. “Maybe it's the game itself.”

John straightened up and threw a disparaging look at both of the younger Tomorrow People. Everyone in the group had his or her talents, and understanding machines was John's. He expected the boys to take his word as final on the subject. Andrew reckoned that John should expect Mike to argue, and he also reckoned that Mike had a point.

“You didn't see how it was when the game was on,” Andrew said, jumping to Mike's defense. “The last time I saw a game draw a crowd like that was when that one guy got a rollover.” He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of a pinball machine that was no longer there, the achievement in question having set the bar so high that the rest of the arcade goers turned their interest to other games that they had a chance of setting their own records on.

“It's not the game,” John repeated. “On, off, high score, low score, the game is perfectly human.”

“How do you know?!” Mike shot back. The light from his torch swung across John's face.

“Sap technology isn't complex enough to be used for mind control. It's decades away from being able to accomplish that. Centuries, if we're lucky.”

“You're sure about that?” Mike challenged.

John spun the scanner around so Mike could see the display. Even in the flickering yellow light of the torch, Mike couldn't miss the readout that cleared the _Space Invaders_ machine of alien technology. “Yes.”

Andrew didn't want to let it drop; he'd already had enough of aliens trying to take over Earth. Short of dragging John from arcade to arcade and making him scan every machine on the planet, though, there wasn't anything he could do except stay vigilant.

Mike didn't let it go. He argued when they got back to the Lab. Then he tried to steal the scanner, only to discover that John had it calibrated so only he could use it.

The stalemate between John and Mike got so bad that Andrew tried to find excuses to stay away. But, ultimately, he was a Tomorrow Person, and the Lab had become a place he needed to be, especially because he couldn't stand to abandon Hsui Tai.

He quickly realized that he needed something to keep himself occupied when he was there, so he'd at least have an excuse not to engage in the ongoing stalemate—one that had quickly changed from whether a specific video game was part of an alien conspiracy, to whether all video games were a sign of society's decline that would lead to the inevitability of aliens taking over a defenseless planet. No points for guessing who was on which side of _that_ argument.

To Andrew's surprise, his Da was the one who gave Andrew the distraction he needed when he brought home a new toy he'd found in the shops.

“What do you have?” TIM asked. Andrew had been so focused on the pattern he was making, and not on Mike and John yelling at each other in the background, that TIM had had to ask the question a couple times before Andrew heard it.

“It's this great puzzle, really hard to solve,” he answered. “All the boys at school have one and no one's worked out what the solution is yet. A couple boys got kicked out last week because they wouldn’t stop trying to figure it out during lessons.” Andrew held up the toy so TIM could see it with his sensors. “It's called a Rubik's Cube.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to tptigger for the beta.


End file.
